Dear Grandma
If I had just a little longer with you, here’s what I would want you to know.
This is weird. It’s weird because you’ve been gone for so long. Because they said give it time and that’s all I’ve done. Because it’s been four years.
You lost people too. You knew exactly how it felt. You know how I feel now. How I still feel after four years. You were very sick the last time I saw you on Earth. Your body was achy and exhausted. It is an odd but wonderful thought that you are no longer so sick. It is strange to know that you have your own set of wings and your own glowing halo because you are an angel now. I wonder if you have watched from where you are. Watched me, watched our family. Have you missed us as we have missed you? It’s been odd to pull crackers for four Christmases knowing that you’re not over the road from us, knowing that I won’t walk in to that house and see your smile ever again.
I have been lonely. I’ve missed you. So so much. I hope I told you I loved you before you left me, if I didn’t then I hope you know now. I hope you knew anyway. I know enough about you to know that you felt the love of others without needing to hear it. I wanted you to go to the grave (when it became apparent that you had to) knowing how much joy you brought me. Maybe you and Granddad found each other again. In fact, I’m sure you did. Love is one of those things, isn’t it? It can survive anything, it lives when you can’t anymore, one of those powerful forces that can exist anywhere, at any time.
I know what you want me to do now. How do I do that? I feel like if I look for you hard enough, I will find you. Like if I gave something up, I could get you back. I want to know how to carry on, knowing that I want you to come back to me and knowing that you can’t come back to me. I want to know how I live with the guilt of wanting you here with me, knowing how sick you were on Earth and that you’re free of that now. It made me feel awful, devastated and distraught, to see you racked with the cough, with the crippling pain, struggling to walk and do the things you wanted to do. Frustrated that you were no longer in a body strong enough to be wholly autonomous. What do I do with all the love I can’t show you anymore?
There are many things that you will never see. I will see them for you, I will hope that you watch over me while I go and see them, I will talk to you, I will think of you, I will remember you. I hope you will remember me when I join you again. Save me a space with you, where you are now, and in 60 or so years I’ll come and join you. I’ll have so much to tell you about. I promise to be just as you remember me. I know you’ll be as I remember you. We’ll finally have a big cuddle again. My heart really hurts now, my head feels dominated by darkness and I’m looking for a way to keep going even though I miss you, but I will be healed when we meet again. I promise not to let you down, even though I am struggling and don’t want anything but to have you back.
When we are together again, it will be beautiful. I promise you that.
I love you.
I originally published this story to Medium on December 26th, 2019.
About the Creator
Remy Dhami
In order to change the future, we must first accept the past.
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The Carousel Of Dreams
Under a dark oak apple tree, in a green land far from here, stood a young girl with eyes as green as the grass, hair like the sunshine, and a quixotic mind. This young girl was named Annie, and despite her dreamer’s imagination and talent for storytelling which drew everyone in the land into her, she was desperately sad. Annie had lost her parents a few years earlued. They were dead, and she was now alone, with nothing but her stories and the apple tree. On a cloudy day, when the sky was iron grey and the air was heavy with malaise all across the country, Annie heard a woman’s voice as she was sat under the tree. Follow me, whispered the voice softly. Annie mused that it could have been the wind, or in her head, but she decided to follow nonetheless, through the red-bricked lanes into the empty villages, across the fields of black earth and wheat, stretching into the pale horizon where land meets sky. Eventually, it lead her to a bright silver roundabout, illuminated like a star, in the shape of an old-fashioned carousel. It was completely silent, other than a soft chime. The voice whispered to Annie that she had one wish she could make. One wish. That was all. Annie thought long and hard about what she wanted most. Finally, she spoke, in a voice broken with emotion, to ask for her parents back. The carousel split open, and out from it stepped Annie’s parents, as though they had been in there the whole time. Annie was overjoyed, and so began to walk with them back to the village. But her parents soon began to wilt and fade - they were no longer of this world, and slowly became a heap of silvery-grey glitter on the shadowy pathway. Annie sunk next to her parents and cried, devastated that they’d left her again. As she did so, one of her tears fell onto the dust. It rapidly began to spin around and take a shape, the shape of a tall, beautiful woman, with long flowing hair and immense gold-tinted wings. She bent down, and told Annie in a voice shimmering with compassion, that there had been a curse on her family - a curse dooming all of the women of the family to die young. But because Annie found the carousel of dreams, she said, and made a selfless wish, the curse was broken now.
By Remy Dhami4 years ago in Futurism
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